


Penguin Tops

by orphan_account



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Normal World, Gotham is a normal city, Homophobic Language, Jim is an insensitive ass, M/M, Oswald is not evil, Slightly Crack-ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Gordon meets Oswald Gobblepot at Gotham's annual city-wide marathon for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the rest is history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penguin Tops

Barbara donated five dollars.

In retrospect, Jim Gordon, GCPD, should have known how stupid that was. What kind of a fucking idiot calls up their ex-girlfriend to pester her for five damn dollars and a coffee date a week after they broke up?

Granted, it was for a good cause. The annual city-wide marathon for Breast Cancer Awareness Month on Saturday required every participant to raise fifty dollars in sponsorship. Captain Essen pledged ten. Harvey fifteen, after a good, long begging session in the morning, and a box of jelly-filled glazed munchkins from Dunkin' Donuts at lunch. Harvey said it was the munchkins that did it, but Jim liked to credit it to his heartfelt speech about human kindness and the goodness of charity.

Edward generously contributed twenty dollars on the spot when asked, but only after explaining how asthma prevented him from participating in the run himself through a series of unnecessarily complicated riddles. “By the way, you dropped your inhaler outside again, Ed.”

Jim was still missing five dollars by the time Friday evening rolled around, and using his own money would feel like cheating, so he phoned the only other contact on his cell out of desperation and his innate instinct for honesty.

Luckily, Barbara didn't give him as hard of a time for it as she did for his workaholicism, and the fact that he seemed to have almost _no_ friends. Which was not true. He had a hundred and thirty-seven friends on Facebook, he pointed out. “And yes, of course they count, Barbara, that's why Facebook calls them ' _friends_ '.” “That's not how social media work, Jim! My God!”

He proceeded to wish her the best of luck in her new relationship with Montoya from Major Crimes and with her conversion to lesbianism. She glared daggers at him over their coffees until he awkwardly left.

“ _It's call bisexuality, you inconsiderate knucklehead!_ ” she screamed at him via the phone three hours later. “ _I hope you choke on your own vomit tomorrow! End voice message. To replay, press-_ ”

Harsh, but not entirely uncalled for, according to five of his friends who had commented on the Facebook post he made about it.

“ _Listen, Barb, I'm sorry about tonight. You know that I'm still new to the whole... gay, bi, lesbian spectrum... sphere thing. I'm making mistakes, but I'm learning. What matters is that I love you... Wait, no, I didn't mean it like_ that _, sorry. I meant as a_ friend _who really loves another friend, unconditionally._ ” Pause. “ _We're still friends, right?_ ” Pause. “ _I'm going to hang up now._ ”

Apology made, Jim Gordon, GCPD, arrived in Arkham Park next morning with the money and a carton of store-bought macaroni salad. The volunteer who registered him took his money and tossed his macaroni salad on top of a sea of macaroni salads, most of which looked home-made and three hundred percent more appealing than his.

Hm. Should have bought cookies.

Jim did his routine stretches at the front line with other presumable athletes, identifiable by their sports outfits from adidas and nike running shoes, both of which Jim wore.

Stretch, stretch. Twist, twist. he could hear his joints and muscles pop. Breathe in, breathe out.

For this marathon, he'd gotten up at five every morning since last month to run from his apartment to the park and back. The route was a grand total of five miles, the same length of the marathon's run. He timed at fifty-seven minutes when he first started, but through self-discipline, intensive dedication, and the sacrifice of the longest relationship he'd ever had, he managed to get that down to forty-nine.

Alright, Barbara didn't _really_ dump him over a marathon for breast cancer. She said that it was a matter of principles. Also because she wasn't as attracted to him as she initially thought.

Jim told her that he didn't get it. He wasn't as attracted to her as he was to his college girlfriend, but he still stuck around and loved her all the same.

“ _No, Jim, no you don't. Because you don't seem to realize how you've treated loving me like a chore you have to make time for, like you_ owe _me something for being your girlfriend but you can't stand paying the dues. When was the last time we had a date without you checking in on work every ten minutes? Two years ago! We haven't had a decent date in two years, Jim. You spend more time with Ed from Forensics than you do with me, and that's not fair! So trust me, I'm doing this for both of our sakes._ ”

Speaking of which, Jim checked his phone for a text from Harvey. He shoved it back into his pocket when there was none.

The announcer bellowed “one, two, three” as he got into starting position.

The whistle blew, and the participants took off.

Jim immediately noticed the difference between him and the other athletic competitors; within ten seconds, he was a good twenty...thirty...forty feet behind the sea of bright neon pink, yellow, and orange, and lagging further as they rocketed ahead like goddamn Olympic athletes, leaving everyone else in the dust.

 _Overachievers._ He mentally scowled and picked up his pace to no avail.

Jesus Fucking Christ. Fine.

He slowed down and creeped back until he blended into the crowd of normal people, figuring that if he was going to lose, he might as well take it easy and lose with everyone else. What was the point of overexerting himself and giving Barbara the satisfaction of actually choking on his own vomit? That wouldn't be cool.

“There's water at every half a mile! Don't forget to take a break, people!” reminded the announcer through his hand-held loudspeaker. Like a charm, the group of normal people (and Jim) broke for water at the first stop.

The weak and feeble languished not far behind, panting as they braved on.

Jim swiped a cup of water and downed it like a shot.

Further behind them came a limping man.

Jim stared.

Then he squinted, incredulous.

The man was wearing a Happy Feet t-shirt.

“Is he okay?” he wondered out loud, not expecting anyone to answer, but someone heard and did.

“Yeah, that's Oswald, Gertrud's son,” said a nearby middle-aged woman. She tsked her tongue in pity. “Poor kid's got a bad leg.”

“What is he doing? He can't make five miles. He can't even make _one._ He looks like he's going to blow chunks.”

Jim took his eyes off Oswald to the woman for a further explanation, only to find her back on the road with half of the group. He looked back to Oswald, who was red in the face, struggling so hard to keep up. At once, Jim knew that if he left the poor guy as he was, he would spend the rest of the day mulling over that choice and feeling worse than he already did.

So he went back.

“Hey!”

Oswald looked up, puzzled to see a golden-haired stranger heading his way.

“Hey, are you okay?” Jim asked, coming to his side, gesturing at the bad leg. “You should stop if you're hurting, no one's going to judge.”

If it was possible, Oswald's face turned even redder.

“'M fine.”

The reassurance was unconvincing and did not deter Jim, who could clearly see that this stubborn idiot was out of breath. And they weren't even at the half mile-mark yet.

“You know, you can slow down,” he pointed out

Oswald shook his head and limped faster, as if trying to get away.

“I'll run with you if you don't want to be last,” he offered. “My name's James Gordon. GCPD.”

Oswald's eyes grew wide, and Jim immediately realized that he should probably have left the last part out.

“Don't worry, I'm not busting you for anything. I just said that out of habit. Besides, I'm off-duty, for once,” he assured him. “Unless you have drugs on you, in which case, you need to stop so I can search your person.”

Oswald stopped, panting. He stared hard at Jim. The tip of his tongue stuck out as he in-and-exhaled. Jim resisted the urge to poke it back in with his finger.

“You're kidding, right?”

“Of course, that was a joke,” he said with a chuckle. “Officers of the law can still make jokes. We're not all work and no fun.” Imaginary-Barbara snorted and rolled her eyes.

“Oh.” Oswald sighed with relief.

A pause.

“Because I have medical marijuana in my car. I-I have a prescription for it if you want to see-”

“Wha- No! It really was a joke, you don't have to-”

“It's for my leg pain.”

“I believe you.”

He must have decided to trust Jim, because he went right back to limping, slower as if to welcome his new companion's presence, which was unnecessary as Jim could obviously walk faster than Oswald was limping.

“It just that I get arrested for it often, Officer.” Oswald explained.

“That's awful,” he said. Ableism, that was what Barbara would have called it. He'd once accompanied her on one of her campaign protests about a year and a half ago for her birthday. She had insisted. It went horribly wrong, and Jim liked not to think about _the incident_ if he could.

Oswald shrugged. “I got used to it after a while. I'm surprised we haven't met before, I've met a lot of GCPD over the years.”

“Might be because I'm a detective. I deal homicides.”

“Oh.” Oswald gave a little smile. “Detective.”

Jim found himself smiling back, flashing his two rows of pearly whites. He watched with a strange flutter in his stomach as Oswald turned shyly away, his thick eyelashes falling over his dark eyes and even darker circles under said eyes. His nose was also pointy.

_See, Barb? I'm making friends._

“So what do you do?” he asked.

“I'm... in the restaurant business,” the younger man answered.

“That's great! Where do you work?”

“Maroni's.”

“Really? Wow! That's my ex-girlfriend's favorite diner-slash-bar, we love the food there.” He smiled wider. “Can't believe I'm meeting the chef himself.”

Seconds passed with no reply. Oswald's face flushed a whole new shade of red.

“I'm the dishwasher,” he finally said.

 _Oh._ Jim inwardly cringed as he felt something die in his guts.

“That's, uh, nothing to be ashamed of,” he managed, clearly another wrong thing to say, because Oswald answered with:

“I'm not ashamed.” And limped faster, away.

Jim closed his eyes and groaned.

_I fucked up. I fucked up bad._

That was how he came in last place, trailing ten meters behind Oswald like the deplorable snail he felt he was.


End file.
